When he learned of his mother's murder, Bosch, then living at a youth hall, dove to the bottom of a pool, screamed until he ran out of air, and then swam back to the surface.
He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (U.S. Army) which can briefly be seen in Bosch season four episode 10, kept in a small wooden box alongside his passport and a LAPD Marksmanship Badge.
Maddie spent most of her time with her mother in Hong Kong, where Eleanor was a professional gambler and star attraction at a Macau casino.
After his return from Vietnam and an honorable discharge from the Army, Bosch joined the LAPD and rose to the rank of Detective III, a position which entails both investigative and supervisory duties.
Following the investigation, which was conducted by Detectives Pierce Lewis and Don Clarke, Bosch was sent to Hollywood Division and assigned to the Homicide desk.
In The Drop and The Black Box he is part of the Open-Unsolved Unit, which mainly works old unsolved cases using new methods, and is partnered with Detective David Chu.
He is also partnered with Chu in The Reversal, which is told from the perspectives of both him and Mickey Haller, who is appointed Special Prosecutor against a man accused of murder of a child given a retrial.
Their unit's commander suspends Bosch for a minor violation of departmental procedure after Soto and he cleared a tough homicide case.
Bosch is partnered with Detective Bella Lourdes, and the pair solves a case involving a series of violent rapes.
He fulfills this promise in Dark Sacred Night with the help of LAPD detective Renée Ballard (first introduced in Connelly's 2017 novel The Late Show), but Elizabeth relapses and ultimately overdoses—which is implied to be suicide—and Bosch struggles with the knowledge that Elizabeth's sobriety meant that she was constantly reminded of her daughter's death.
He is informed that he has contracted chronic myeloid leukemia from his exposure to radiation in The Overlook, and has also been working as the investigator for his half brother once again (due to Cisco having to undergo an appendectomy).
After Haller gets his client off for murdering a judge, the LAPD detective assigned to the case tells Bosch he has "undone everything he did with the badge".
In Desert Star, Bosch is readmitted to the LAPD following Ballard being given permission to lead a new Open-Unsolved Unit from a city councilman whose sister's murder is still unsolved.
When she asks about the letter and pills, he admits his leukemia has spread to his bone marrow and is terminal, though does not know how much time he has left, and is considering ending his life when it gets too bad to avoid being a burden on Maddie.
In Resurrection Walk, due to his and Ballard's actions in the prior novel, his half-brother has managed to prove a man innocent of a murder he was accused of which was actually committed by the serial killer.
The drug trial appears to be working, but is reported to have some side effects, including short term memory loss.
He and Haller meet the woman, accused of killing her ex-husband, a sheriff's deputy, and agree to take her case, despite knowing it will be hard because she pleaded guilty.
Bosch mentions the connection to the gang in court, despite Haller's ex-wife calling attention to his supposed memory loss.
It doesn’t go as planned, as the men are shot, but Bosch discreetly retrieves Ballard’s badge from one of their corpses and passes it to her before he is questioned.
She had formerly lived with her mother, Harry's ex-wife Eleanor Wish (a former FBI agent, ex-convict, and professional poker player, who Bosch met in The Black Echo and married while on a case in Las Vegas).
[5] This book is also the first time the two men properly meet, when Bosch investigates the murder of a lawyer whose practice Haller takes over.
[6] Besides the Connelly series, Harry Bosch has made cameo appearances in books by Paula Woods, Joe Gores, and Robert Crais.
In The Black Ice he uses a Smith and Wesson .44 as a decoy gun when entering Mexico so that border guards would seize that and not his service weapon, hidden in his tire well.
In The Burning Room, Bosch is carrying a Glock 30, .45 ACP caliber, semi-automatic pistol and using the Kimber as his backup gun.
Collections: Uncollected short stories: In February 2015, Amazon Prime premiered the series Bosch, based on the novels.
For example, in the television series, Bosch is born nearly 20 years later than in the novels, so that events can happen in the present day time, as they once did in the books.
Also in the television series, Harry "is 47 years old and a veteran of the first Gulf War in 1991, where he was part of a Special Forces team that cleared tunnels.
"[23] In the TV series, Bosch carries Kimber Custom TLE II .45 ACP caliber semi-automatic pistol as his duty weapon.
[24] In the first season of the Netflix television series The Lincoln Lawyer (2022), featuring Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Bosch' half-brother defense attorney Mickey Haller and adapting The Brass Verdict, Bosch's role from the novel is adapted to the characters of Cisco (portrayed by Angus Sampson) and Raymond Griggs (portrayed by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine).
Author Michael Connelly has confirmed that the television versions of Bosch and Haller do not live in a shared universe as they do in the books due to rights issues between Netflix and Amazon Studios.